A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air."Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
That's the story that inspires the title to Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. This charming book tackles the growing problem of improper punctuation, which seems to be getting out of control. With the advent of email, text messaging, and even blogging, punctuation and grammar have lost their formality and attendant clarity. An informal, conversational tone is fine in many cases, but what's up with the superfluous apostrophe, especially in the possessive its? We see such errors way too often: "Luxury at it's finest." Ugh. More superfluous apostrophes: "The lawyer's all had Blackberrie's." (That last word is tricky: of course the apostrophe does not belong, and the product is called a BlackBerry -- plural, BlackBerrys.)
Author Lynne Truss delivers her defense of punctuation with British dry humor throughout this 204 page book. Apostrophe abuse is not the only target: commas, dashes, colons, semicolons, and more (although the Pipe is never mentioned) are discussed in snobby-but-funny prose. She's like a proper British schoolmarm whose class you'd love to take even though you might fail it.
A nice addition to the first pressing of the book is the "Punctuation Repair Kit" consisting of several stickers to cover up (or add) an apostrophe to offending signs. If you're a punctuation stickler like me, you'll understand the catharsis in correcting those annoying signs like "Banana's for sale" or "The Smith's."
Sticklers, unite!
7 comments:
Just found you through Mrs. Incredible. That panda joke is one of my favorites, or is that favorite's. Don't worry, I do know the difference. Sounds like a good book.
I notice punctuation and spelling errors quite frequently. Since I'm sometimes guilty of the same (my aging brain, you know) I usually let it slide. There are some instances, however, where you really must pay attention. M and I were just at the beach and on a sign in front of a restaurant had a food item misspelled. This was a sign they purchased from a printer. Between the printer and the owner of the restaurant, nobody caught the error? Scary.
I'm absolutely united on this topic!!!!!
(Excessive exclamation points don't count. They're there for emphasis, yo.)
I'm with you on all points, but for me spelling is the BIG irritant. (I still struggle with necessary, a word that relegated me to runner-up status in a spelling bee.) It is so prevalent, I have to just let it go or I would drive myself crazy. As a nurse for many years, it was shocking to see such errors in the highly educated medical personnel at the august UCLA. I, myself, have been known to err with the august apostrophe on occasion.
This is off-subject, but you commented on a HuffPost comment I had posted on my blog about Pat Tillman. I don't if you are aware of it, but if not, I thought you might like this song posted by Wayne Kramer. Sad as it is, it does make you want to bust a beat for Pat.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-kramer/pat-tillman-all-been-pl_b_64793.html
Nine out of ten emails seem to contain at least one typographical error, better known as a typo. Never before have so many words been mangled. Is it caused by carelessness, keyboard clumsiness, or just plain ignorance? The U.S. will celebrate its fourth annual National Punctuation Day on September 24. Let's make it a worldwide affair, when we name and shame offenders, and return faulty emails to their senders, with mistakes highlighted in red. More about this in The World's First Multi-National e-Book:
http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/world_punctuation_day.htm
The slightly more ribald version of that joke I've heard involves a prostitute, and had 'bush' instead of 'shoots'. I'm less than perfect with my punctuation and can be downright horrid with spelling, but that's why spellcheck was invented, right???
a writing professor i had about three years ago recommended this book, but i never got around to it. i've always been a bit of a grammar elitist myself, and sadly i must periodically cringe at my own errors (often when late at night and/or tired, but there should be no excuse). i scrolled down and saw some race photos as well, which reminds me of my eagerness to run again at some point.
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